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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Trump Administration denies disaster aid for Arkansas, Kentucky and other states; Nationwide blackouts hit Spain and Portugal; The world's biggest oil companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damages; PLUS: Trump fires all the scientists working on the U.S. Government's flagship climate change assessment... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): A grim signal: Atmospheric CO2 soared in 2024; DOGE employees gain accounts on classified networks holding nuclear secrets; Scientists are raising the alarm about Trump's deep sea mining executive order; Oil companies downplayed extent of spills in Gulf of Mexico; North Dakota enacts first US law shielding Roundup from some cancer lawsuits; Interior plan slashes oil and gas environmental reviews to 1 month... PLUS: Report on national monuments being eyed for energy draws concerns... and much, MUCH more! ...

Will they fight for the actual health and lives of their constituents? Or go along with (literally) deadly DOGE cuts? Will they throw away tens or hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the clean, renewable energy industry in their own home districts? Or screw over their own voters and local economies in favor of Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and huge corporations? All of those questions, a few answers, and much more --- even several bright spots --- on today's Earth Day 2025 BradCast. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

Among our coverage...

• West Virginia coal miners are suing Bobby Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), for recent layoffs at the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH) and the shut down of critical medical screening and job replacement services for miners. The lead plaintiff in the suit is suffering from lung disease, amid a growing epidemic of black lung in Coal Country. But with some 875 of NIOSH's 1,000 employees terminated earlier this month, they are no longer available to help move miners like him to non-dusty jobs, as required by the Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. In addition to free screenings for lung disease and the right to job transfers, the federal law also blocks Administrations from weakening existing protections. The Trump Administration, however, doesn't seem to much care about the rule of law.

• In response to the NIOSH layoffs and shutdown of these critical programs for miners, WV's Republican U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito --- who voted to confirm Kennedy just weeks ago --- is now begging him to restore those jobs at NIOSH, many of which were in her state, and the critical medical services for miners in Central Appalachia. All of that, as Trump recently welcomed coal miners to the White House to serve as props for his announcement of new Executive Orders meant to try and force the revival of the dying coal industry ("beautiful, clean coal," as he insists on falsely describing it) and to otherwise try and knee-cap cleaner, safer, more profitable renewable energy initiatives in the bargain.

• Also part of the new Administration's celebration of Earth Day this year, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency sent letters to hundreds of EPA employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights today to inform them their services are no longer needed, as environmental justice --- protecting low-income Americans and minorities most at risk from air and water pollution --- no longer aligns "with the agency's current and future needs."

• Back in Congress, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House are facing a serious dilemma. The House Ways and Means Committee is currently tasked with cutting some $1.5 trillion in federal services to Americans in order to help pay for Trump's $4.5 trillion tax cuts to mostly benefit huge corporations and the wealthy. But many Republican members of the Committee have seen huge, renewable energy-related job growth in their home districts, thanks entirely to tax credits made available via the Inflation Reduction Act passed without a single Republican vote in 2022 and signed into law by President Biden. The majority of the tax credits to companies to spur new manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy business are, by design of the previous Democratic Administration, in "red" states and counties. But Trump has ordered Congressional Republicans to kill all clean energy funding enacted by Biden. This is a real, if under-reported conundrum for Republicans and, potentially, a very good opportunity for Democrats in response.

• But Earth Day turned out to be another very bad for chief DOGE Bro and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Just after the close of the markets today, Tesla issued its latest quarterly report. It was brutal for the company, which announced that profits fell an extraordinary 71% as compared to the first quarter of 2024. That, thanks to several reasons, though none of them as obvious as the worldwide public disgust in response to Musk's obnoxious turn late last year to the hard, Trump, MAGA right.

• As Desi Doyen is here to remind us, however, there are still some reasons to be hopeful on this year's Earth Day. At least everywhere else in the world, where new technologies and clean-energy breakthroughs are actually being supported and making remarkable progress; where nature itself is offering exciting new opportunities to fight climate change; where threatened species are making surprising come backs in several places thanks to scientists, conservationists and local communities; where cities and states around the world are making major advances in reducing pollution, and; where countries --- other than the U.S., at least --- are banding together to help vulnerable nations adapt and survive our climate crisis.

• On the other hand, Desi is also here with our latest Green News Report --- where every day is Earth Day --- to catch us up with a few stories we missed while off on Spring Break last week. Most of those stories, focused largely on the U.S., are not nearly as bright, however, especially as the world lost one of its great climate champions this week...

Happy Earth Day. Somehow.

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Well, we're back live on today's BradCast, like it or not. With so much going on we've got no choice but to run right into the middle of the freeway and pray for the best. The result? Not a bad show, if I say so myself. [Audio link to full show follows this tweet.]

After a quick round-up, needed for context today, of just some of last week's madness while we were otherwise off for a much-needed break, we pick up with...

• The opinion [PDF] of the very conservative Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who, last week in the case of the mistakenly-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia warned that the Trump Administration's refusal to bring the man home to Maryland from a gulag in El Salvador "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear." Judge Wilkinson goes on to warn, among other things, that "The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order," and that "If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?"

• But Donald Trump's tyranny is now here, in full flower, which one Republican U.S. Senator admitted recently has all of her colleagues "afraid", even if most are still too afraid to say as much out loud.

• SCOTUS was literally forced to awaken from bed over the weekend to issue an extraordinary, 7 to 2, middle-of-the-night order PDF to the Trump Administration, clarifying that no Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas may be deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 "until further order of this court." (If you're wondering who were the two Justices in favor of sending migrants to foreign gulags without benefit of any Constitutional due process, that would be Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, of course.)

• And, by the way, Washington Post reported over the weekend that the 18 intelligence agencies comprising Trump's own National Intelligence Council concluded in an assessment earlier this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the U.S., as Trump has lied about in unlawfully invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants without due process.

• Trump's fiscal policies continue to be disastrous as well. The U.S. stock market plummeted yet again on Monday in response to Trump's tariff and trade war and his new threats of firing his own Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who Trump is now blaming for the fact that he crashed the U.S. economy with his own dumb trade war that few if any countries are apparently willing to negotiate with Trump about.

• Pope Francis, the world's first Latin American pontiff and a great champion of progressive causes including the fight against climate change and for environmental justice --- as Desi Doyen details today --- died on Monday at the age of 88 after a months-long illness and a brief meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance on Easter Sunday.

• That's not all we cover today, but it gives you an idea before we open up the phones to callers, callers, callers. Lot of them, including some with some very interesting thoughts and questions! Please tune in!...

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On today's BradCast: "Irrational exuberance" reigned on Wall Street as of 1:18pm Eastern Time. Though, after the past week of our moronic President's idiotic "economic policy" crashing the markets day after day after day, it's hard to blame investors for over-celebrating even the smallest hint of a respite from his imbecility. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Before we get to Trump (sort of) backing down from his worldwide (except for Russia) trade war, a bit of an addendum today to my disturbing conversation on yesterday's program with Slate's legal ace Mark Joseph Stern. He and I were both in general agreement on Tuesday that the Supreme Court's horrible 5 to 4 ruling on Monday night --- in a case challenging the deportation and foreign imprisonment of Venezuelan migrants without due process under Trump's peacetime use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 --- allowed for the detention and foreign imprisonment of not just migrants but of U.S. citizens without due process as well.

Today, preeminent Constitutional law scholars Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC-Berkley's Law School, and Laurence Tribe, Emeritus Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, argued an almost identical case in a New York Times op-ed headlined "We Should All Be Very, Very Afraid".

So it's not just some progressive radio dude and a legal reporter at a lefty-ish Internet publication issuing such a warning this week. Thus, I felt a need today to underscore that important point once again before it too gets lost in Donald Trump's ongoing authoritarian chaos.

For what it's worth, even a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas on Wednesday has now temporarily blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants under Trump's Stalin-like implementation of the Alien Enemies Act. Details on today's program.

THEN... The roller coaster on Wall Street continued on Wednesday, though at least much of today's ride was an upswing for a happy change. After four and a half days of market blood-letting following Trump's ridiculous "Liberation Day" pronouncement of major sanctions against virtually every nation on Earth (except for Russia) last week --- and with the bond market tanking as well and economists warning about a likely recession --- President Super Genius finally backed down, at least partially, as he always does.

Despite a remarkable, immediate spike in the major market indexes in response, within minutes after Trump's lie-filled social media post about his "90 day PAUSE", investors may soon begin to realize that the news isn't quite as good as they might have hoped. Trump (for today anyway), is leaving in place 10% tariffs against pretty much everybody (except Russia) and now claims to be raising tariffs against China to 125%, because they dared match the previous sanctions he'd declared against them.

In all, though it was unclear as of this afternoon whether Trump was dropping his 25% or 35% or 10% tariffs against our largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, if Trump keeps in place the current 10% tariffs against most of the world, and his 125% tax on goods imported from China, it seems that the inflationary cost to American consumers will be just about what it was before Trump choked this afternoon. Even after today's spike, the Dow remained about 10% lower than its all-time record set during the Biden Administration.

How that --- or any new brain farts from President Stable Genius --- affects the market in coming days remains to be seen.

In addition to the financial cost of Trump crashing the economy, there has seemingly been a political cost as well to President Make-It-Up-As-You-Go-Along as well, resulting in what Politico last night characterized as a "House Republican mutiny" that threatens to hold up (post air: sure enough!) or even block all together, his massive, deficit-exploding tax cuts for his wealthy friends and their corporations.

How will Trump's partial flip-flop on tariffs affect his political fortunes on the massive GOP budget plan? Stay tuned. Though keep your hands and arms inside the roller coaster at all times until this madness comes to a complete stop...whenever that may be...

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Who coulda foreseen it? Oh, yeah. Everybody in the world other than the idiot who did it and his weird cult followers working desperately to justify it today. As you might expect, we've got a lot to try and make sense of on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this very brief summary.]

So, Donald Trump pulled the trigger during his rambling "Liberation Day" remarks in the White House Rose Garden, just after the close of markets on Wednesday. The trade tariffs would be slapped on virtually every country in the world and would be, as one tech investment manager described it just after the announcement, "worse than the worst case scenario."

Today, Wall Street reacted. Poorly. The Dow fell over a cliff by more than 1,600 points. The S&P 500 plunged nearly five percent. The tech-heavy NASDAQ plummeted almost six percent. That's what happens when 54% tariff on China suggest that your next iPhone may soon cost $2,300. (The price of Apple stock crashed by nearly ten percent). In all, today amounted to the biggest nosedive for the markets since the mishandling of the COVID pandemic in 2020...the last time this idiot was in the White House.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman asserted that Trump's numbers announced on Wednesday included "false claims about our trading partners" and simply make no sense, suggesting he's "gone full-on crazy." Though, no matter how many times reality and facts are likely to be pointed out to him --- that we are not, for example, "subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year" --- he "will never drop that claim."

Trump's made-man and Senior Trade Advisor Pete Navarro, fresh out of prison, defended the tariffs, claiming they will raise $6 trillion in revenue for the U.S. over the next ten years. They won't. But if they did, that would amount to a new 25% tax on American consumers, the largest tax hike in U.S. history, since U.S. consumers, not foreign governments, will be paying higher prices to cover the huge new import taxes on just about everything.

Trump's new taxes are likely to result, as well, in reciprocal tariffs from virtually every nation in the world against the U.S. Every nation in the world, that is, except Russia, which was curiously left off the list of newly sanctioned nations for some odd reason.

But, as our friend David Dayen, investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect explained on this program last year, these tariffs are better seen as a means by which Trump hopes to bend companies, industries and, yes, entire foreign governments, to his will. "Look at these tariff threats more as like sanctions," Dayen told us in early December. "'If you do things we don't like, you're going to get higher tariffs.' That's not really about trade policy. That's really about doing what the United States says. It's really about policing the world through economic terms."

"Businesses are going to come to this President and say, 'Give me a waiver from your tariff.' The mind boggles at the potential for corruption here," Dayen said at the time. "This is what oligarchies look like. This is what Russia looks like. If you're closer to the king, you're going to do better."

"He wants to use tariffs and, more generally, the role of the United States as an economic hegemony, to bully other countries to do our bidding," Dayen foretold, in what now appears to be exactly what Trump is doing. He reiterated and added to some of those thoughts at TAP today. "Stop trying to place coherence on a policy that's really just a mob boss breaking legs and asking for protection money."

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) smartly explained it in very similar terms last night in a social media thread. "Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive," Murphy argued, citing how "British kings used taxation to reward loyalty and punish dissent. ... The tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief."

But there is a way out. There is a way to end this madness. Trump only enjoys the unilateral power to issue economy-killing, job-crushing, 401k-flattening sanctions because Congress gave him that power. They can also take it away. There was an attempt by every Democrat and a handful of Republicans in the U.S. Senate yesterday to do exactly that, when it came to sanctions against Canada. The measure was successfully adopted by the Senate, but is unlikely to receive a vote in the U.S. House, where it would likely also be adopted if members were allowed to vote on it. So, Speaker Mike Johnson will make sure they can't.

With all of that in mind, "these tariffs won't stand," writes Josh Marshall at TPM today. Anyone running for Congress or thinking of doing so has all they now need to take down any Republican who would support this insanity --- and the harm it is now causing to their own constituents. "It's malpractice for anyone challenging a Republican member of Congress not to be on this today," he detailed this morning.

So, yeah. Once again, it all comes down to democracy and elections. To that end, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Pennsylvania this week ruled in favor of voters, believe it or not. And a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge in Texas did the same thing late last month. We break down both rulings today before Desi Doyen joins us to close with our latest Green News Report, including a bit of bad news for the coal industry, thanks to good news from voters in Illinois this week as, once again, still more evidence that, yes, elections matter!...

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Tuesday was a very good day for Democrats. For a change. At ballot boxes in both Wisconsin and Florida, and in the U.S. Senate. We enjoy while we can on today's BradCast, while trying to make sense of everything else we have time for in the bargain. [Audio link to full show follows below this summary.]

Republicans won both U.S. House Special Elections for vacant seats in Florida's 1st and 6th Congressional Districts on Tuesday. You'd think the GOP would be celebrating today, but not so much. Last November, in each of those very "red" Districts, their candidates won by more than 30 points. On Tuesday, however, GOPers were still victorious, but the vote swung some 15 points or more toward the Democratic candidates in both contests. If that were to happen across the country during next year's mid-term elections it would become an absolute wipe-out for the Republican Party in the House.

In Wisconsin, even worse news for Republicans, Donald Trump, and his co-President Elon Musk. The state went to Trump just over five months ago by less than a point. But on Tuesday, the Democratic-backed candidate for WI's state Supreme Court, Susan Crawford, appears to have crushed GOP-backed MAGA candidate Brad Schimel by ten points. That's virtually unheard of in modern times in the notoriously narrowly-divided Badger State. That, after Musk dumped more than $25 million of his own money into the race --- even giving away million dollar checks to voters (unlawfully) in the bargain --- in what became the most expensive state court election in U.S. history. Liberals will now retain majority control of WI's high court for at least the next three years. Their majority could grow larger still as rightwing Justices face re-election bids over those years. Key issues likely to be decided by the high court during that time include abortion, voting and collective bargaining rights and challenges to GOP gerrymandering of Congressional districts. All of that is why Musk was so happy to set so many millions of his own dollars on fire, to no avail.

All of that happened on Tuesday, as New Jersey's Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker was wrapping up his marathon, record-breaking, 25-hour and 6-minute, non-stop "good trouble" speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, injecting a bit of hope into a few moribund Democrats across the nation and in the halls of Congress after ten long weeks of Trump and Musk's brutal destruction of the federal government and Constitutional order. It doesn't hurt that Booker, an African-American, also smashed the long-held Senate filibuster record set in 1957 by notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond, during his then successful blockade of civil rights legislation.

We're joined today to discuss all of that and much more by two of our longtime O.G. blogger friends, HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, award-winning columnist at Salon and proprietor of Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', eponymous blogger and co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

In addition to Tuesday's elections and what they may portend for Trump and Musk, as well as Booker's Senate 'filibuster' and what it may --- or should --- portend for Democratic leadership in Congress, we also discuss Trump's economy- and job-crushing new tariffs, his ill-considered and ever-increasing DOGE slashing of the federal government, and much more!

"He can bully everybody. He can't bully reality," observes Driftglass today, regarding Trump and one or more of the topics mentioned above. Says Digby about Republicans: "I think that they are seeing the writing on the wall, that there is a very, very large backlash."

Tune in for a very lively "Liberation Day" edition of The BradCast! Cheers!...

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Today's BradCast is, necessarily, a bit dark. There are, however, a few bright spots here and there if you listen closely enough. [Audio link to show follows this summary.]

Very briefly, these are some of the stories covered today...

• The Philippines former strongman President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by Philippine law enforcement officials on Tuesday, on an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of Crimes Against Humanity. Interpol reportedly participated in his detention, after which he was flown to The Hague in The Netherlands to face the charges. Duterte is known for his extra-judicial, often point-blank, shot-to-the-head killing spree of supposed "drug suspects" during his six years as President and two decades as Mayor of one of the nation's largest cities. The government acknowledges some 6,200 killings during Duterte's reign in office. International human rights groups, however, put the bloody total closer to 30,000. Elected to the Presidency in 2016, the same year as Donald Trump, our President had congratulated Duterte (pictured together above) in 2017 for his "unbelievable job on the drug problem," congratulating him for "what a great job you are doing." In addition to victims' families finally seeing some justice, there are a few other perhaps dark, but perhaps hopeful lessons we may learn from this incident regarding our own President.

• Tune in, at least for this part, because I can't even begin to adequately summarize the roller coaster ride today on Wall Street touched off by Trump's threat to double-down on 25% tariffs --- to 50% tariffs --- against our ally Canada last night in retaliation for a threat by Ontario's conservative Premier Doug Ford to cut off electricity to several U.S. states. As the day progressed, both Ford and Trump appeared to back down from the worst of it. For now. But the disaster Trump's tariffs (and threatened tariffs) has made of the markets --- along with increasing inflation and his mass firing of federal workers --- has economist worried about a coming "Trumpcession". If things continue to tank, it could leave a very serious mark --- perhaps even one that MAGA will notice --- given that Trump's "superpower" was supposedly his brilliant business acumen and genius ability to strengthen the U.S. economy. Oops.

• Elliot Higgins, journalist, founder and creative director of Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, founded in 2014, specializing in fact-checking and open-source intelligence investigations by both professional and citizen journalists, has a few thoughts on what happens when "disordered discourse" captures a political party (like the Republicans) and "then the state itself" (like the U.S.) and the destabilizing, and perhaps deadly effect it has on democracy itself. His first thread on that is here. His follow-up, on potential solutions, is here.

• And with that in mind, a few thoughts about a friend, mentor and occasional on-air guest over the years, Kevin Drum, who, we learned on Monday night, lost a long battle with cancer. He was a pioneering OG blogger, originally of Calpundit (2002-2004), then Washington Monthly's Political Animal (2004-2008), then Mother Jones (2008 through 2020) and, finally, beginning in 2021, his last blog, the independent Jabberwocking. His last appearance on The BradCast was in early 2023, on how to face down Republicans' threat at the time to not raise the dumb debt without sending the U.S. into default on its debt. Today, a brief tribute, including a few personal remembrances of Kevin, one of them an hours long discussion on election integrity in the cold on my back porch. Washington Monthly's remembrance is here. Clare Jeffrey's of Mother Jones is here. Josh Marshall's is here. Ezra Klein's is here. Heather Digby Parton's is here. A tribute page set up by his wife Marian on Facebook is here.

• Finally, Desi Doyen is here with our latest Green News Report, including a burning oil tanker's worth of environmental news, both dark and otherwise, from here in the U.S. and around the world from over just the past few days...

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It seems like we've been covering Wisconsin's ferociously-contested, closely-watched, expensively-waged --- and sometimes questionably-tallied --- Supreme Court elections for decades now on The BradCast. Because we have. And now, another one just weeks from today could once again flip the partisan balance of the high court in the Badger State. As discussed with our guest today, the results are important to the entire nation. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP, a bit of quick election news from even farther north, as the Liberal Party's Mark Carney wins a landslide election on Sunday to become Canada's next Prime Minister on a wave of anti-Trump nationalism. Whether he gets to keep the job remains to be seen, with parliamentary elections coming very soon, even as the nation's Conservative Party has lost much of its steam as Canadians unite to take on Trump's threat of trade war and annexation.

Canada is hardly the only ally Trump is pissing off. In Ukraine, however, his idiocy is reportedly coming at the cost of actual lives after he has blocked arms, intelligence and now even crucial, commercial satellite imagery from reaching Ukrainian troops on the battlefield as they struggle to hold off Russia's invasion. Over the weekend, in advance of peace talks this week, Trump has claimed that he may impose new sanctions on Russia and unfreeze his block on weapons and intelligence to Ukraine. Don't believe him.

THEN, with another election just weeks away that will, once again, determine the partisan balance of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we are joined by Wisconsin's native son, JOHN NICHOLS, progressive author and National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation. The April 1 election comes just two years after liberals finally won back 4 to 3 control of the state's high court for the first time in 15 years.

What is at stake if the majority flips back to control by the state's hard right Republican Party? "Pretty much everything," explains Nichols, "from abortion rights, to voting rights, to labor rights" and, "this may seem a bit of stretch to folks who haven't been following Wisconsin politics, but I tell you this is the case: whether Wisconsin respects the results of presidential elections." That, he says, is among the points that should raise interest in this contest for everyone in America.

The theoretically "non-partisan" contest to fill the seat being vacated by liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, the Court's most senior jurist, is being waged between liberal Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford and the state's radical, Republican former Attorney General Brad Schimel. He is being backed by lots of billionaire money, including from one of Elon Musk's political affairs committee, which has begun to blanket the airwaves in favor of Schimel.

But Nichols reports that the unpopular Musk's entry in the race --- which he clearly knows nothing about --- is as likely to propel support for Crawford to the polls in what could become a very big turnout and a bellwether for elections during the Trump Era over the coming months and years.

"I don't think [Musk] knows anything about Wisconsin. I don't think he even cares about Wisconsin," argues Nichols. "Someone told him that this Wisconsin Supreme Court race is a critical juncture in our politics, and he should come in on the Republican/Trump side. They were right --- it IS a critical juncture. If this race is decided for Susan Crawford, it will be the first major push-back against not just Trumpism, but also against Musk's entry into politics. So, yeah, it is a critical juncture."

"The billionaire class is all in for Schimel," he adds, "because of the simple reality that these Wisconsin Supreme Court races are pivotal contests. Not just for the state, but really in defining a lot of the direction of American jurisprudence."

Much more, of course, from Nichols --- who knows Wisconsin (and U.S.) politics as well as anyone --- on today's BradCast...

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As discussed with our two guests on today's BradCast, Trump's speech to Congress on Tuesday night was so long and boring it could still be going on today, for all I know. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP today, however, a few important news headlines...

• After enacting 25% trade tariffs against our two largest trading partners and allies, Canada and Mexico, on Tuesday --- and seeing the stock-market plummet in response --- Trump agreed on Wednesday to delay implementation of tariffs on automobile imports, which would have sent car prices skyrocketing in the U.S., for one month.

• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled narrowly against the Trump Administration in one of its first rulings regarding whether or not they will require the Administration to follow the rule of law or not. In a 5 to 4 emergency ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the Court's three Democratic appointees to uphold lower court rulings that order the Administration to unfreeze as much as $2 billion in payments to thousands of contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in order to pay for work that has already been completed. Trump's January 20th Executive Order freezing both contracts and payments, signed on his first day in office, has already resulted in hundreds of layoffs by contractors, food for starving children left rotting in warehouses, and life-saving medicine going undelivered around the world.

• Newly-elected, 70-year old Democratic U.S. Rep. and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner of Texas died on Tuesday night following an unspecified medical emergency after attending Trump's address to Congress, where he used his platform to rally against planned Republican cuts to Medicaid. Turner's death, and the months it will take to hold a special election to fill his seat, will give House Republicans a bit more breathing room in what is still one of the slimmest House majorities in U.S. history.

THEN, it's on to the longest --- and arguably dullest and most falsehood-filled --- addresses to Congress ever delivered by a U.S. President. It wasn't officially a State of the Union Address, for reasons that aren't worth boring you with (if you watched the speech, you've been through enough already), but it had all the same trappings.

It was also the most vengeful and obnoxiously partisan address ever delivered to Congress by a U.S. President, as Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor throughout, blaming him for things like the newly-rising cost of eggs, describing Joe Biden as "the worst President in American history" and Democrats as "radical left lunatics".

The evening also featured some Democrats trying whatever they could think of to push back against Trump's lawless wrecking ball of an Administration to date. Those efforts resulted in one member, Rep. Al Green of Texas, being removed by the House Sergeant-at-Arms at Speaker Mike Johnson's direction, and others walking out at various points throughout the seemingly endless remarks.

We're joined for insight on all of this today, as ever, by our very smart, old school blogger friends HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, the award-winning columnist at Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious 'DRIFTGLASS', longtime fellow blogger and broadcaster, as co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.

The hour and 39-minute speech "was absolutely interminable," agrees Parton today, arguing that the "litany of atrocities" outlined by Trump as unparalleled achievements in his first six weeks in office, suggests he believes "he is no longer encumbered by the law, by the Constitution, by anything."

"Who is there left to be persuaded, cajoled, shocked, outraged?," Driftglass asks rhetorically. "The only thing that is going to shock the people in the middle is economic hardship. The recession that Trump is bringing down on their heads. Cutting off their services. Invading their Social Security. That might actually light a fire under them and get them moving."

But we will see. We discuss, among many other things...

• the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of attempts by elected Dems to push back against Trump, and the forced removal of spirited protester, Rep. Green, from the proceedings;
• Trump's vow to "get" Greenland from Denmark "one way or the other" and the beginning of the GOP's renewed, if ever-present, love for American imperialism;
• the hypocritical reaction to the speech by Congressional Republicans who, just one year ago, were clutching their pearls after what they described as "the most political, partisan speech ever delivered by a President in the hallowed House chamber" following President Biden's final SOTU.
• how Medicaid and even Social Security are now both "on the chopping block" for Trump and Congressional Republicans;
• and explanations from both Digby and Driftglass as to why Trump is violently dismantling the federal government with Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros, despite the unpopularity of those actions among the public.

That's just a taste. As ever, tune in for much more...

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I've gotta be quick with today's BradCast summary, as Trump's first address during his second term to a joint session of Congress is coming up shortly. And I don't want to miss a single lie! (Full coverage tomorrow, natch). [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

But the central theme of today's show: Donald Trump is bad for business. He has no clue how to run a business, much less a country, which should decidedly not be run as a business. They are two very different things. But even on his own terms, Trump is lousy at running the country as a business.

Among our many stories today underscoring those points in various ways....

• Today, Trump's 25% tariffs against our two largest trading partners and friends, Canada and Mexico, kicked in, earning blowback from the otherwise even-tempered and very polite Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And, again, the U.S. stock market took another dive in response to Trump's "dumb" trade war, wiping out all gains since the election on the major indexes, thanks to Trump being lousy at his job.

• Among Trump's biggest supporters last November were farmers. Now, they too, are beginning to notice what a clown he is, after the Trump Administration began wiping all climate related data from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture website (cuz climate change doesn't exist if you delete website references to it), along with information on programs regarding grants and subsidies for farmers. All of which they rely on, especially as the Summer growing season is set to begin. A group of farmer's and environmental groups have now filed suit against Trump's USDA, demanding the returns of the databases and tools (that we paid for, before Trump thought it made good "business sense" to waste all of those tax-payer dollars.)

• Cuts and mass layoffs at our beloved National Parks, in advance of the busy Summer tourist season, aren't going over much better with the public --- or the crucial staffers who keep the parks open and clean and some 375 million visitors a year safe. About 4,000 workers at both National Parks and U.S. Forests have now been laid off for specious, and potentially unlawful, reason. People will die because of these pointless cuts. Park experts believe it may take centuries to rebound from the damage to the parks these cuts will cost.

• But what about all of that "waste, fraud and abuse" that Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros are telling us they are axing within federal government agencies? More than$100 billion, Musk is now claiming! Last week, we detailed how the DOGErs quietly deleted billions of dollars in claimed "savings" from their so-called "Wall of Receipts" website, documenting government contracts they'd cancelled at agency after agency. It turned out their "receipts", numbers and claims to go with them were riddled with errors. Last week, they had claimed to have "saved" American tax-payers some $65 billion. But thanks to excellent reporting by a number of outlets, it appeared the number was closer to just over $2 billion at best. The buffoonery continued over the weekend, however, as the Bros once again quietly removed still more false items --- about 1,000 of them! --- and replaced them with others again. You'll be stunned to learn the largest of those new "receipts", as well, are also riddled with errors and false claims.

• This week we are "celebrating" --- if that's the right word for it --- our 16th Anniversary of connecting the climate change dots over your public airwaves in our world famous Green News Report. We have been producing it, week in and week out, over all these years, of course, thanks only to support from readers and listeners like you! Today, in our latest GNR, Desi Doyen has news on Trump's funding freezes crippling the nation's farmers; climate-fueled wildfires exploding in the Carolinas; and mass layoffs now underway at NOAA and the National Weather Service...

• Finally, since Trump is so bad at both business and diplomacy, even a major oil company, Norway's Haltbakk Bunkers, is now refusing to fuel up U.S. Naval vessels in protest of Trump's disgraceful treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House last Friday. "We have today been witnesses to the biggest shitshow ever presented 'live on tv' by the current American president and his vice president," the company posted to social media shortly after. "Huge credit to the president of Ukraine restraining himself and for keeping calm even though USA put on a backstabbing tv show. It made us sick. Short and sweet. As a result, we have decided to immediate STOP as fuel provider to American forces in Norway and their ships calling Norwegian ports. ... 'No Fuel to Americans!' ... We encourage all Norwegians and Europeans to follow our example. SLAVA UKRAINA".

Running the government "like a business" is working out great! Welcome to "America's Golden Age"!...

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Today on The BradCast: Blowback to the Trump/Musk DOGE Bro Coup seems to be beginning in earnest following a series of rough town-halls for members of Congress in their local districts. It was also very bad day for the top Bro. But, based on what may happen this Friday, the blowback for these would-be dictators could get still worse. [Audio link to full story follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... Twenty-one senior civil service employees at what had been called the U.S. Digital Service, before it was renamed by Donald Trump as the U.S. DOGE Service, resigned en masse on Tuesday. All of the skilled, non-partisan tech engineers who announced their resignation in a brief group letter [PDF], previously worked for major tech firms like Google and Amazon before joining the USDS to serve their country by helping to modernize computer services and systems across the federal government, including "Social Security, veterans' services, tax filing, healthcare, disaster relief, student aid, and other critical services."

In their letter, the senior officials detail how Elon Musk's DOGE crew of young, unskilled Musk fanboys showed up in January with "White House visitor badges", many refusing to identify themselves, and "asked questions about political loyalty, attempted to pit colleagues against each other, and demonstrated limited technical ability." The process, they write, "created significant security risks" and resulted in layoffs of 40 colleagues whose lost "expertise makes critical systems and Americans' data less safe."

"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," they write in their quit letter. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."

There was more bad news today for the world's richest man, and for the company that won him that title. New data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association released today finds that Tesla sales are absolutely tanking across Europe, falling nearly by half over the past year, as Musk has become a pariah as a global champion of far-right politics. His partnership with Trump and open support for Germany's far-right neo-Nazi party, as well as other strongmen, appears to be costing Tesla tens of billions of dollars. With the news of plummeting sales in the EU as compared to one year ago --- even while sales of Electric Vehicles in the EU otherwise sky-rocketed during the same period --- the share price of Tesla stock in the U.S. fell over a cliff on Tuesday, by more than 8%. The company's total worth has fallen more than 20% since the start of the year.

That news was accompanied with bad news for Trump as well, as a number of U.S. consumer confidence surveys released on Tuesday, revealed the largest decline in confidence in the U.S. economy in years, thanks to Trump's tariff and trade war threats and failure to tame inflation, as promised on the campaign trail.

THEN... With Trump and Musk perhaps beginning to feel some economic anxiety, a grassroots initiative hopes to spread that anxiety to corporations who kowtow to Trump with the dissolution of anti-discrimination (DEI) efforts.

This Friday, February 28th, a number of grassroots organizations are calling for a 24-hour "Economic Blackout", from Midnight to 11:59pm, hoping to demonstrate the spending power of American consumers. The efforts asks participants to buy and spend money on nothing beyond essentials that day, and to support only small, local businesses if they must spend anything at all.

"No purchases in store, online. No Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy. No fast food, gas, major retailers. No credit or debit cards for non-essential spending," one widely-circulated flier instructs, adding "We can do this TOGETHER!" along with a promise to grow the effort more broadly in the future. "If they fail to listen, the next blackout will be LONGER."

We're joined today by JONATHAN SIMON, a longtime friend as an election integrity champion and author, who is now a Senior Editor at the non-profit news outlet, Who, What, Why. In a recent article, he pondered some of the pros and cons of such an effort and its chances of success.

"It's more the beta test of a potentially very powerful weapon, which then needs to be expanded and focused," he tells me today, explaining how, if successful, this sort of protest could be expanded. "When you've shown you have a powerful weapon, then you can start articulating and bullet-pointing demands on what you want, and what you want in return for not using the weapon. This is very early stage. But there is enormous latent power in consumer buying choices."

"Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the annual GDP of this country," explains Simon. "It is an enormous part of our economy. Corporations and the economy in general are exquisitely sensitive to even small downturns or small deficits."

"We grew up soft. Let's face it. We grew up in the world's most stable democracy," he observes, while offering appropriate skepticism of the effects of this new (for our generation) protest tactic, as almost the least we can personally do. But, he notes optimistically, "It has the potential to galvanize us and wake us up. We need to wake up. This could be the start of it"...

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On today's BradCast: What's in it for Donald Trump? Seriously. Why does he want to break the government? [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

I know why Elon Musk wants to dismantle and destroy the federal government piece-by-piece (so his government contracts can't be policed or businesses regulated, etc.) And I understand Trump's need for retribution against his perceived enemies. But why does Trump want to seemingly dismantle damn near every federal agency, from the U.S. Forest Service to USAID and beyond, no matter how ham-handedly? No matter how much it grows (not shrinks) the national debt, no matter how many Americans (including his own voters) it puts out of work, and no matter how much the chaos he is wreaking continues to sink his approval ratings? No matter how much none of his flailing lowers the price of eggs.

It's certainly not in the name of "efficiency" or cutting "waste, fraud and abuse", as the evidence makes plain, no matter how many lies and quickly disproven claims about "million and millions" of dead people receiving Social Security checks or Musk's DOGE Bros claiming to have "saved" at least $55 billion in Government contracts to date. (It's more like $2 billion.) All false claims that both Trump and Musk repeat, only to have to walk them back when proven wrong, time and again.

We discuss a lot of that at the top of the show, along with a bunch of related news headlines from over the weekend, before opening up the phones today to listeners for answers to that simple question: What's in it for Donald Trump? Why does he really want to dismantle the government?

We talk to a lot of callers with a lot of differing explanations (though being controlled by Vladimir Putin seems to be a listener fave...even if it doesn't fully answer all of my questions about Trump's behavior here.)

Perhaps Trump's recently-confirmed Sec. of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, gave away the truth on Fox "News" over the weekend, when he falsely claimed that Trump ran on "reprivatizing the economy". He didn't run on that. Though Project 2025 --- which he pretended to disavow during the campaign --- certainly called for it. Is that his game? Cripple federal government so private corporations can then fill the gap and offer the same services to the American people for a higher price that includes profit to those private corporations?

Please tune in for lots of interesting discussion today. And, if you have a better explanation for why Trump wants to kill the U.S. government by gutting hundreds of thousands of government jobs and services, seemingly at random, for no easily discernible reason, feel free to let me know in comments below...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Los Angeles Fires intensify toxic air pollution and housing shortages in Southern California; Trump and Republicans spark a firestorm of disinformation about the L.A. Fires; PLUS: Congressional Republicans threaten to withhold disaster aid from California... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Lifeboat Capitalism: Some burn, some drown, and some make money either way; Global Warming Surges Well Past 1.5-Degree Mark in 2024; World's Record Heat Is Worsening Air Pollution And Health In Global South; States Are Preparing To Help Or Thwart Trump's Second-Term Plans; How Big Oil hindered the fight against L.A.'s wildfires... PLUS: What happens when a state insurer of last resort goes belly-up?
... and much, MUCH more! ...

Lots of news today on BradCast, though not all of it terrible. It also features not one, but two song and dance men, though only one of them is not a horrible person. Either way, we promise to leave you singing on your way out of the theater. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Among today's stories of note...

• In the largest single-day act of clemency in modern U.S. history, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of some 1,500 people today who were released from prison to home confinement during the COVID pandemic. As discussed, he also promised "more steps in the weeks ahead."

• The Dept. of Justice's Inspector General released a long-awaited report [PDF] today on the FBI's preparation for what became Donald Trump's January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Despite years of false claims by MAGA Republicans, including members of Congress, that undercover FBI employees somehow instigated the attack, the I.G. report finds, among other things, that none were present at the Capitol that day.

• Inflation and, specifically, high prices at the grocery store have been cited by many as the reason for Donald Trump's apparent election victory last month. In fact, he ran on promises of lowering prices at the grocery store "very quickly" throughout the campaign. In September, for example, he declared: "Vote Trump and grocery prices will come tumbling down". In October, he promised to "bring your grocery bill way down." And, in an interview that aired on NBC this past Sunday, he attributed his victory, in part, "on groceries" and said again that "we're going to bring those prices way down." Rarely did anyone in the media throughout the campaign press him on how he would lower the cost of groceries. So it seems voters were misinformed enough to believe him and vote for him. And yet, in an interview with Time before Thanksgiving just published today, Trump admits he has no actual plan to lower prices at the grocery store. "It's hard to bring things down once they're up," he told the magazine. "You know, it's very hard." We'll see how long it takes, if it ever does, for MAGA buyers remorse to set in.

• But you know who did help keep your grocery prices low? The Biden Administration's Federal Trade Commission. Biden's progressive Chair of the FTC, Lina Kahn, led a lawsuit against the proposed 2022 merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, arguing the $20 billion deal would raise prices for consumers and lower pay for the company's 700,000 union workers. This week, a federal judge agreed with the FTC and blocked the merger, at least for now. In the meantime, Trump's nominee to Chair the FTC, Andrew Ferguson (a former clerk for corrupt Justice Clarence Thomas), vows to abandon Khan's tough standards for mergers between powerful American companies.

• North Carolina Republicans took a beating in statewide races in November, losing the contests for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, Sec. of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction. They also lost their gerrymandered supermajority in the state legislature. So, while they still have the power to do so in their lame-duck session, Republican lawmakers, passed a massive bill under the guise of disaster relief for Hurricane Helene (which simply shifted already existing funding from one account to another) and used the next several hundred pages of the bill to strip many of the key powers from all of the incoming Democratic statewide officials. The outgoing Democratic Governor vetoed the obvious power grab. But, last week, the GOP-controlled Senate used their supermajority to override the veto and, despite an outpouring of protest from voters at the state capital, the GOP-controlled House did the same last night. Nonetheless, I suspect this fight ain't over.

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report on, among other things, the wildfire in Malibu, California that led to the emergency evacuation of thousands of residents, including film and TV legend Dick Van Dyke, who turns 99 on Friday. Also, on the effort by environmentalists to add Endangered Species Act protections to the quickly disappearing Monarch Butterfly. As Des mentions at the end of today's show, you can leave a public comment here in favor of the Fish and Wildlife Department's effort to protect the butterflies.

  And, as she also discussed, that fantastic and charming and so, so sweet music video and interview with Van Dyke by Coldplay's Chris Martin, released just last week before the fire --- filmed at Van Dyke's Malibu home which, thankfully (as you'll be especially happy to hear after watching the video!), didn't burn down this week, can be seen right here. Never mind today's BradCast for the moment. Go watch that video. We'll be here when you get back. You'll thank us!

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As detailed on today's BradCast, the avenues for massive corruption by the incoming Trump Administration are, shamefully, only beginning to come into view. The fact that our corporate media so utterly failed to make such possibilities clear --- or even to simply explain to the electorate what tariffs actually are and how they actually work --- is just one more indictment that we will spend decades paying the price for. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

FIRST UP... The final uncalled seat for the U.S. House in the next Congress, following the November 5th election, has finally been called. Republican Rep. John Duarte conceded on Tuesday night to Democrat Adam Gray in California's 13th Congressional district. It was the closest race in the House this year. As of air time, just 187 votes separate the two out of more than 210,000 cast, as Dems flipped a third seat in the Golden State this year. That leaves Republicans with one of the slimmest House majorities in history, holding just 220 seats to Dems' 215. That said, with the resignation of Matt Gaetz, and two other GOP members set to step down if confirmed to be in Trump's cabinet, the margin for passage of any of his legislative agenda may be in question in the lower chamber in the early part of next year. Just one or two defectors, or members who are out sick, could make it impossible for Republicans to get anything through the House.

THEN... We've debunked the long-ago, many times discredited 2000 Mules film --- supposedly documenting massive fraud by Democrats to steal the 2020 election from Donald Trump --- over and over again in the past several years. Both state and federal law enforcement authorities have done so as well. Even the publisher and distributor of the documentary film and its companion book have pulled both from distribution and offered an apology. This week, so did the fraudulent film's director and rightwing pundit Dinesh D'Souza. He issued an apology to one of the people seen on surveillance video in the film, which claimed the man was committing a "crime" by depositing "fraudulent votes" into a drop-box near Atlanta in 2020. In fact, the man was dropping off his own ballot, his wife's and those of his adult children who lived with him --- all perfectly legal in Georgia. In his apology, D'Souza (who was pardoned for his own ACTUAL election fraud crimes by Trump!) appears to blame his partners on the film, a long-ago discredited GOP "voter fraud" fraudster group called True the Vote, for misleading him about the footage they supplied for his use in the film.

FINALLY... Donald Trump has been vowing for the past year or more on the campaign trail to institute massive trade tariffs on foreign nations of anywhere from 10% to 1000% depending on his mood on any given day at any given event. He has also, for years, been lying to the American public about tariffs, claiming they are paid by the nation whose products are taxed upon import into the U.S. In fact, as our guest today explains, they are almost always paid by the consumer in some fashion and are likely to inflate prices to boot.

We're joined today by DAVID DAYEN, investigative financial journalist, award-winning author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect magazine. He offers both a primer on how tariffs actually work (and/or don't), and how Trump plans to use them to muscle concessions and favors from other nations, beginning with Mexico, Canada and China, our three largest trading partners from whom we import some $1 trillion worth of goods each year.

"The heyday of tariffs was the 1890s," Dayen explains. "But the way that Trump is going about it, you've got to think of these tariffs as more like economic sanctions." Sanctions that could come back to bite the U.S. via a trade war if those nations decide to slap their own tariffs on our goods in return.

Trump has claimed that his recently promised 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and new tariffs of 10% on goods from China are meant to stop the "invasion" of migrants and drugs into the U.S. But that explanation, charges Dayen, is dubious at best. They are more likely intended as "simply leverage" in advance of renegotiations of the USMCA, the slightly modified replacement for the NAFTA trade treaty that was struck between U.S., Mexico and Canada during Trump's first term.

But, as Dayen reported at The Prospect last week, "there's a second piece to Trump's tariff strategy" that involves corporate importers and exporters, rather than nations. That, as he explains today, is where Trump's ability to give away tariff waivers is set to be a wildly lucrative scheme that will open the door to perhaps unprecedented corruption and payoffs from corporate interests hoping to avoid the economic pain of tariffed goods.

In his explanation, Dayen cites the famous "Cantillon Effect" which "comes down to whoever is closer to power is going to have better success in business." And now, between Trump's hotels and publicly-traded social media company and, perhaps most disturbingly, his new cryptocurrency venture --- (which a Chinese entrepreneur currently under SEC investigation for fraud, market manipulation and other violations of U.S. law just dropped $30 million into, three weeks after the election) --- it is going to be open season to buy favors and favoritism galore from the new President.

"This is what oligarchies look like," says Dayen. "This is what Russia looks like. If you're closer to the king, you're going to do better. The next four years are going to reflect this tendency."

And, yes, as he argues today, "the mind boggles at the potential for corruption"...

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